Session
Technical Poster Session I
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
CubeSats and SmallSats have seen increasing success in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). However, there is a desire to send small, low cost missions beyond LEO into harsher environments. Additionally, most bus architectures do not currently have the on-board processing capa-bilities to handle high-speed science data and autonomous operations. MARES, currently under development at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, is a capabilities driven design and architecture with an emphasis on reliability, scalability, and high performance process-ing. Its applicability is broad including SmallSat missions, CubeSat missions, and high performance instrument processors. The highly integrated architecture reduces mass, volume, and power but still provides the flexibility of a modular system. Mission critical functions are handled by the Command and Data Handling (C&DH) Processor and Auxiliary cards, which are radiation hardened up to 100krad. SpaceCube™ Mini 3 processor card is primarily used for instrument data processing but its versatility and processing power provides a digital platform to reduce the SWaP of components and applications such as above-the-constellation GPS, software defined radio and LIDAR. This can be achieved by utilizing the same Mini card for various applications but multiple units can be utilized on the same bus if needed via a backplane design for the bus avionics. The catalog of new cards and features for MARES continues to grow, and the architecture can be expanded further with the design of mission-specific cards that plug into the same backplane as the rest of the bus. Standardized backplane configurations will reduce resources spent on customization and ensure a robust and compatible system.
Modular Architecture for a Resilient Extensible SmallSat (MARES)
Utah State University, Logan, UT
CubeSats and SmallSats have seen increasing success in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). However, there is a desire to send small, low cost missions beyond LEO into harsher environments. Additionally, most bus architectures do not currently have the on-board processing capa-bilities to handle high-speed science data and autonomous operations. MARES, currently under development at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, is a capabilities driven design and architecture with an emphasis on reliability, scalability, and high performance process-ing. Its applicability is broad including SmallSat missions, CubeSat missions, and high performance instrument processors. The highly integrated architecture reduces mass, volume, and power but still provides the flexibility of a modular system. Mission critical functions are handled by the Command and Data Handling (C&DH) Processor and Auxiliary cards, which are radiation hardened up to 100krad. SpaceCube™ Mini 3 processor card is primarily used for instrument data processing but its versatility and processing power provides a digital platform to reduce the SWaP of components and applications such as above-the-constellation GPS, software defined radio and LIDAR. This can be achieved by utilizing the same Mini card for various applications but multiple units can be utilized on the same bus if needed via a backplane design for the bus avionics. The catalog of new cards and features for MARES continues to grow, and the architecture can be expanded further with the design of mission-specific cards that plug into the same backplane as the rest of the bus. Standardized backplane configurations will reduce resources spent on customization and ensure a robust and compatible system.
